Estefania Echeverri, right, on Thursday lights a candle for Jesse Childress at the memorial honoring the 12 killed in the Aurora theater massacre. The impromptu memorial, which includes 12 crosses, it the latest example of a relatively young phenomenon of memorializing rather that trying to forget.

As media outlets continued to clamor for information in the criminal case against suspected theater killer James Eagan Holmes, a previously released document that had been widely publicized was altered slightly on Tuesday to remove a key piece of information.

The motion by defense attorneys, originally released Friday, was altered to black out a section that revealed Holmes was a patient of University of Colorado psychiatrist Dr. Lynne Fenton.

That information made headlines across the globe for the media looking for clues behind Holmes’ motive for allegedly unleashing a hail of bullets on July 20 inside an Aurora movie theater, killing 12 and injuring 58.

The revelation that Holmes was seeing a psychiatrist was a significant development in a case that has been put under a gag order by District Court Judge William Sylvester.

No explanation was given for why the motion now is redacted — four days after it had been published on the Colorado Judicial Branch’s website.

Also blacked out was a reference to the Colorado statute that covers patient-physician confidentiality in a court case.

The motion in question argued that a package sent by Holmes to Fenton and seized from the university should be considered privileged information between the patient and his doctor and not part of the criminal case.

The motion also sought information about who had contact with the package in an attempt to determine who leaked its purported contents to the media.

Denver attorney Dan Recht said he suspects the redaction was made by the court, not the defense or prosecution.

“It’s possible the judge realized he made a mistake in releasing that motion because he may have realized that he violated his own gag order,” Recht said.

Sylvester has taken a stance that everything in the case should be closed except for what he decides should be open. That is not the typical way criminal proceedings work, Recht said.

“Normally, everything is public except for individual things,” he said. “What this says to me is the judge has to quickly sort out what is sealed and what is not. Frankly, it hasn’t been done perfectly so far.”

Sylvester has set an Aug. 9 hearing to consider an 85-page motion brought by numerous media outlets, including The Denver Post, to unseal the case.

Jeremy P. Meyer was a reporter and editorial writer with The Denver Post until 2016. He worked at a variety of weeklies in Washington state before going to the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin as sports writer and then copy editor. He moved to the Yakima Herald-Republic as a feature writer, then to The Gazette in Colorado Springs as news reporter before landing at The Post. He covered Aurora, the environment, K-12 education, Denver city hall and eventually moved to the editorial page as a writer and columnist.

More in News

Ford Motor Co. is going ahead with plans to move small-car production from the U.S. to Mexico despite President-elect Donald Trump’s recent threats to impose tariffs on companies that move work abroad.

Donald Trump’s administration, already seen as the wealthiest in modern history, is about to get even richer when Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Gary Cohn is named the president-elect’s chief economic policy adviser.

Denver authorities have “red-tagged” the Rhinoceropolis artists’ space that was evacuated in frigid temperatures on Thursday night, citing a number of fire code violations and the fact that five people were living in a building that isn’t zoned for residents.